New airbag rule for speed racers at ski World Cup spawns many questions, few answers

A new rule for certain alpine World Cup ski events has become a major talking point among athletes.

In early November, alpine's governing body (FIS) announced that racers in speed events (downhill and super-G) would be mandated to wear airbags in competition.

The wearable technology, made by the Italian company Dainese, fits like a vest over an athlete's shoulders and upper torso and has been in development since 2013.

It's designed to go off in crashes, lessening impact and improving safety in a sport which has seen major injuries strike the likes Mikaela Shiffrin, Aleksander Aamodt Kilde and Canada's Valerie Grenier in recent years.

But Brodie Seger, a skier from North Vancouver, B.C. who is on the athlete council at Alpine Canada, said he and his teammates are dubious about some the immediate and unintended consequences of the new airbag law.

"What I think doesn't sit entirely well with a lot of my teammates is that there's still a lot of questions that revolve around it and how some things are going to work in practice," Seger said. "So I don't think anybody's … entirely satisfied, shall we say, with the way it's been communicated."

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The Canadians are not alone. Last week, the German publication Blick reported that 40 athletes had already applied for exemptions, which are meant to be limited to people with medical reasons only.

Seger said he's in a WhatsApp group with athletes from each country on the World Cup circuit in which a poll was recently posed with a yes-or-no question: should airbags be mandatory or not?

The results came back nearly even.

"I think the main question that athletes